Good morning.
There will be a raft of brain surgeons expecting me to be beaming from ear to ear at the news that the Olympic Stadium is back on the market. They are spot on. It’s great news.
The West Ham deal has collapsed under the strain of all that was so very grubby about it. Newham council’s feet became colder than a well diggers ass and they have bailed on the Porn Barons.
Whilst it would have made my millennium to know West Ham were playing Championship football in front of twelve and a half thousand unwashed Charlies in their finest Primark garb, the grim financial nightmare that now awaits them as they remain at Upton Park will actually be far funnier.
Sports Minister Hugh Robertson has announced:
“The key point is the action we have taken today is about removing the uncertainty. The process had become bogged down in legal paralysis.
“Particularly relevant has been the anonymous complaint to the EC over ‘state aid’ and the OPLC received a letter from Newham Council yesterday saying because of the uncertainty they no longer wanted to proceed. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back and we thought it better to stop it dead in it tracks now.
“We know there is huge interest in the stadium out there from private operators and football clubs and crucially we remove any uncertainty.”
“This is not a white elephant stadium where no one wants it, we have had two big clubs (West Ham and Tottenham) fighting tooth and nail to get it.
“The new process will be more like how Manchester City took over the Commonwealth Games stadium which is regarded as a leading example of how to do it.”
What depressed me about this whole process was the brutally thick nature of many Tottenham fans. Banging on and on about the running track. At no time have THFC even remotely considered playing with a running track between the team and the fans.
Some actually bemoaned the legal challenge as it was ‘wasting time and money that could be better spent on securing the services of striker.’ Please. Grow a brain.
I was even blasted for supporting an idea that would guarantee we could genuinely compete, but the love of litter, nail & wig bars and Chick King offers pulled at the heart strings of many.
The THFC bid has always been about a zero landfill recycling of the existing site into a state of the art stadium and that is what scuppered it for the unchecked egos involved, hello Lord Sebastian Coe, I mean you. These narcissists couldn’t cope with the shrine cast in their image being casually knocked down.
They want to be remembered for their pluck, their audacious delivery of an Olympic games in the nation’s capital. Nothing showy you understand, just a small plaque unveiled by the Queen so every young athlete in the country knows for ever who to thank.
L-E-G-A-C-Y.
What is left of course is a White Elephant to beat all white elephants. A venue hopefully perfect for athletics but unfit for purpose as a top notch football stadium.
The West Ham bid was no more than a highly polished begging bowl. The Porn Barons would still agree to play there if there was a long jump pitch in the centre circle. Their operations at Upton Park were a non starter.
Beneath an ‘Under New Management’ banner borrowed from a recently shut down local restaurant they banged a jingoistic drum with sinister references to the nationality of the club and it’s supporters. Sadly their specter of Evil Johnnie foreigners pouring squillions of filthy foreign dosh into a football club suddenly looked quite attractive when compared to a pair of iffy looking Sex Industry magnates trying to flog season tickets for 99p.
Then along came the Olympic Stadium and with a member of the OPLC publicaly acknowledged as having been on the pay roll of West Ham… The bidding process was a clean sweep in favour of Gold & Sullivan. They were so happy, they actually began celebrating the night before.
And so now what? Well Tottenham are in a ridiculously excellent position. They will presumably re-enter the new process knowing that they are significantly closer to being able to pursue to NPD which is everyone’s first choice.
West Ham are left well and truly in the lurch.
The stalking horse here is Orient. I hope the O’s come out of this not only unscathed but perhaps, slightly ahead. Barry Hearn I do not know, but he strikes me as an honourable type. I wish him well.
Barry Hearn you’re a top bloke and I wish you and your club all the best.
emspurs excellent…seems to have sailed over all their heads.
Good to see you in fine form Harold – There’s something about the Dog Brady that brings out the best in you.
This whole thing has been an utter shambles on the part of the OPLC from beginning to end and you hit the nail absolutely squarely on the head when you talk about people building monuments to themselves out of the tax-payers money.
Anyone with half a brain going into their own development project with their own money would at least ask themselves a few pertinent questions before they start chucking cash around. What am I going to build? what will it be used for? How can I make sure I get the best value out of the project?
All of this went out the window in a blatant pursuit of self-interest – From Hooey (One of the real villains of this piece in my eyes) and her ‘I won’t have a sordid football club anywhere near my stadium’ (oh, the irony), through to Coe banging on and on and on and on and on about legacy.
Coe gets his idea of the need for an athletic legacy from the fact that, when he goes to his friends kids schools to see rugger and the Eton wall game, they all seem jolly keen on long runs and cold showers. His desire to build a monument to himself has glossed over the fact that the current national athletic stadium is used by 5 people a day (and one of those to sleep off the pain stripper he’s drunk the night before) and is full to the rafters once about every 10 years… Actually, correction, it’s not possible to fill it to the rafters any more because of the health & safety issues as they can’t afford the upkeep.
Those responsible for this complete botch-up of one of the most fundamental questions involving the games (i.e. Public value for money) should have their bloody knighthoods & MBE’s taken off them and be forced to clear up the mess. Coe, Blair, Hooey, Johnson, Mandy the lot of them.
I thought the real point of the Olympics was to show off Britains state of the art mass-surveillance and riot control systems to visiting dictators and their security advisors?
Coe and co. made promises based on other people’s money, they were potentially facing embarassment over the OS legacy fiasco, because it made them look like flannelers of no substance, which of course won’t do, so presumably public money will now have to foot the larger part of the bill for maintaining it as an athletics venue, at least until they either win or lose their bid to host the World Athletics Championships in 2017.
I can’t see us going in for it on that basis though.
At the end you sound like dragons den!”& for that reason I’m out !”
Yup,
I must try to go out more often.
:-)
Hey Spurious.
See above.
Hey bruxie, what are you blathering on about you tool?